A girl in winter: a novel

A Girl in Winter is the moving and enigmatic story of Katherine LInd, a European woman in wartime England. The vicious winter weather has paralyzed the countryside; the emotions of Katherine are frozen as well, as fear and loneliness increase her sense of isolation. By splicing the story of Katherine's sunlit 16th summer in between the halves of a single winter day on which the suitor of her youth returns to her present life, Larkin illuminates the process by which we learn to decipher and accommodate the longings of the heart.

From inside the book

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Page 151said Jane, with a sudden flash of temper, flicking her cigarette needlessly, and
moving to the bookcase. "And that sounds silly, too. What have I got to be bored
about? I'm healthy, I'm not starving, I live in a perfectly good house. Silly, isn't it?

Page 191It was silly of me. And I knew I should put someone else to no end of trouble, I
was so worried ... I'm always doing these silly things. It was in the chemist's, was it
?" Katherine nodded. "I was wondering how it happened. I had been shopping, ...

Page 200"I'm silly," she said. "I always have been. I know I'm silly, but, do you know, I can't
decide. I don't like the idea, even now. It would be convenient, and so easy, and
no-one could say anything very well, but I should never feel quite happy in my ...

About the author (1976)

Philip Larkin was a British poet, novelist, critic, and essayist. Born in 1922 in Coventry, England, he graduated from St. John's College, Oxford, in 1940 and then pursued a career as a librarian, becoming the librarian at the University of Hull in 1955. Although he led a retiring life and published infrequently, producing only one volume of poetry approximately every 10 years, Larkin was still considered one of the preeminent contemporary British poets. He is often associated with the "Movement," a 1950s literary group that, through the use of colloquial language and common, everyday subjects, endeavored to create poetry that would appeal to the common reader. However, this association came about mainly because Larkin's poem "Church Going," for which he first gained critical attention, was published in New Lines, an anthology of the "Movement" poets. In reality, his work, particularly his later poems, is not typical of the group. Larkin's published a total of only four volumes of poetry: The North Ship (1945), The Less Deceived (1955), The Whitsun Weddings (1964), and High Windows (1974). He also wrote two novels, Jill and A Girl in Winter, and published two volumes of prose, Required Writing and All That Jazz, a collection of his reviews of jazz records. Philip Larkin died in 1985.